


Nobody Likes a Skinny Liver

by yhlee (etothey)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Extra Treat, Folklore-Typical Mentions of Seduction and Liver-Eating, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-15 20:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16070357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/pseuds/yhlee
Summary: The problem with being a fox spirit is all the interfering relatives who want you to hurry up and seduce and eat someone already.Thanks to Edo no Hana for the beta.





	Nobody Likes a Skinny Liver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Irusu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irusu/gifts).



Gina was trying to figure out where she had put the last clean mug when there was a knocking on her door. _Not my roommate again,_ she thought impatiently. Her mom and aunties had vetted the young woman. "Good sense of fashion," Mom had said approvingly. "Delicious thighs," one of the aunties had said. And the conversation had degenerated after that.

The doorknob turned. Gina groaned. She recognized fox-magic when she saw it. Was it too late to put up a barricade? She hesitated, then grabbed the cabinet that contained her watercolors and started dragging it toward the offending door.

Too late. The door opened. Her mom, resplendent in a black gown that fit as tightly as a very tight glove, sailed into Gina's apartment, lip curling as she took in the plastic cups full of paintbrushes, half-finished paintings, and clutter of coffee mugs, none of which had been cleaned recently. Two women trailed in her wake: Auntie Bora, whose pearl necklaces, pearl earrings, and pearl bracelets could probably have funded a minor philanthropic venture, and Auntie Cristella Joyeuse Ji-Sun IV, whose name no one made fun of in her hearing, glittering in an ballgown sewn with a tasteful assortment of crystal beads and sequins.

"Hi Mom," Gina said, desperately trying to head off the Dreaded Conversation at the pass. "Can I, er, order you pizza or anything?" Because the only food in the fridge belonged to her roommate Anna, and Gina wasn't to touch any of Anna's stuff on pain of death.

" _Pizza_ ," Mom said, shaking her head. "Darling, just because we're shapeshifters doesn't mean you shouldn't take care of yourself. You're twenty-three! You should be feasting on the finest of livers, not...not..." Her gesticulations took in the entirety of the apartment, especially the rumpled basket full of laundry. "Do you even have anything in your wardrobe but free T-shirts with holes in them and _jeggings_?" She pronounced that last word with genuine sorrow.

Auntie Bora slunk forward, clattering all the way, and sat uninvited in Gina's shapeless armchair. "I had such high hopes when you lured Emma--"

"Anna," Gina said.

"Whatever. When you lured her in. It's perfectly natural for a young fox to take her time with her very first seduction, savor every detail! But you've been rooming with her for _two years_ and you haven't made a move! Ella--"

"Anna."

"Whatever. She has a girlfriend of her own! You haven't even so much as kissed her, let alone with tongue, or shown her the Ninety-Nine Carnal Touches!"

Gina closed her eyes and counted to nine. "Anna is a great roommate." Even if she had very high standards of neatness, which Gina didn't.

"Young love," Mom said with a sigh. "But darling, don't you see? You can immortalize her forever if you just hurry up and eat her."

"I'm not eating my roommate!"

Auntie Ji-Sun examined the rings on her slender fingers. She looked absurd in the context of Gina's room; her outfit would better have suited a night at the opera. "Young ones have no appreciation for the high arts these days," she said, "or for top-quality prey. If _you're_ not going to eat Alice--"

"Anna," Gina said, although by now she had given up all hope of her relatives ever getting her roommate's name right.

"--I've half a mind to..." Auntie Ji-Sun smacked her lips suggestively.

" _No_ ," Gina said. " _Nobody_ is eating my roommate."

Mom made a placating gesture. "Fine, fine, you've gotten attached and you need a little time to work up to the idea. We can go out and find you some cute but annoying frat boy for your first kill--"

"Mom!"

"--and in the meantime you should persuade Amelia--"

" _Anna_."

"--to plump up a little. Nobody likes a skinny liver. You deserve only the plumpest and most succulent of livers for losing your virginity, you know."

Gina put her face in her hands and moaned. "Mom, I lost my virginity when I was nineteen with another art student." Turpentine fumes might have been involved, although she was never going to admit that to her interfering family. There was a reason she had switched to watercolors.

"Did you kiss him with tongue?" Auntie Bora said with professional interest, eyes gleaming.

"They were a them," Gina said, "and it's none of your business!" Also, not that her family would care, it hadn't been a seduction on her part, more like mutual pants feelings.

"Besides," Mom said dismissively, "even if there was cunnilingus or a blowjob or anal or whatever it is you did--"

_"MOM!"_

"--it's not _really_ losing your virginity if you _didn't eat their liver_."

Gina realized that she was making inarticulate strangling noises. "Mom," she said in her calmest, most reasonable voice, "there's no way to eat people's livers without _killing them_. Which is illegal! I don't want to lose my funding to do art! It's I-L-L-E-G-A-L to kill people!"

Gina was confronted by three wide, blank, uncomprehending gumiho stares. "Honey," Auntie Ji-Sun said, "since when have foxes ever cared about something as jejune as the _law_? It's tiresome and irrelevant."

"Today's foxes have no respect for tradition," Auntie Bora was saying to Mom. "In _my_ day, you went out and seduced the handsomest young man in the village the day you turned eighteen, and chomped on his liver the same night, just like clockwork! None of this dilly-dallying."

"Now, now, Auntie," Mom said in a soothing voice, "times have changed. These days it's the done thing to seduce and eat women and nonbinary people too, you know. You've got to be sensitive about these things."

"Of course, of course," Auntie Bora said, sounding chastened. "It's just so hard to keep up with the times."

Gina took a deep breath. "Mom! I appreciate your concern, but really truly, I'm fine. I just want to paint."

"Oh," Auntie Ji-Sun said, "are you playing the _long_ game? These all look like nonrepresentational art to me, but if you're chatting up some scrumptious young models, that's a pretty good way to go, too. Not my style, but every fox has to find her own ways."

Gina hated it when her aunties tried to be supportive. "No, Auntie, I'm not eating my 'models.' I paint landscapes. Please, just go away and leave me alone."

Auntie Ji-Sun's face fell, but Mom grabbed her arm and hustled her toward the door. Auntie Bora trailed after them. "We'll see how you feel in another month or two," Mom called as she left the apartment. "Love and kisses!"

Gina had just relaxed into the blessed silence that followed when her stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn't eaten in the last day. She stared at one of her unfinished paintings while she tried to think of a fast way to get food into herself, and came to the horrified awareness that, without realizing it, she had painted a giant liver as part of her semi-abstract landscape. "No," she told her stomach firmly as an unbidden image flashed into her mind of her roommate's luscious figure, which surely contained a delicious liver, "I am _not_."


End file.
